Some Observations

While flying around the outskirts of maps in pan cam mode and taking the panoramas you see here, i noticed a number of things that show bungies true attention to detail, from things within the sky box (although the area is more of a sphere) to things that generate the surrounding environments close to the ground.

One thing i noticed which strike me quite heavilly is the amount of space that is generated as scenery versus the amount of space used for actual gameplay. Noticeable more so on the DLC maps then those that came shipped on the disk, weather this is a problem of the amount of space you have on the disk after the game itself has gone on there without multiplayer i dont know.

for example look this image taken from above foundry towards the top of the sky dome

the play space is tiny compared to the rest of the map, even more so when consider that because of the camera restrictions theres alot of rendered space thats not shown here (about double), now ive yet to look at this properly on other maps but it seems that this is the same on most of the dlc maps and a few of the shipped maps.

Now i have to come to wonder what bungie may have been able to do with this space if they handnt have used it all for scenery, if bungie had reduced the amount of scenery space in foundry and other levels similar, could some of the processing power thats used for that area have gone to making a better looking interior of the playable area, now dont get me wrong im not saying that it’s not a good looking area inside the play able space, i just wonder if maybe that could have been done.

Another thing is the sky box, which probably should be called a sky dome or sky sphere due to its shape but that’s another tangent for people with greater knowledge of these things then myself.

There is nothing actually on the sky box itself except for stars or maybe a cloud pattern. This came as a surprise to me, i know bungie had said in a press conference that everything you see is rendered in the engine as an object, but i Didn’t think they meant literally EVERYTHING.

For example the huge structure of the ark that you see on the final campaign level or on the construct map. absolutely huge things but they are still rendered in the game and not just a picture on the sky box, all be it there a bit flat when close up, but then they were never meant to be viewed at such close range. The point is they are rendered, not the greatest deatil in the world but enough to make things out and know what’s what, and this honestly surprised me, because they render all this and work on this area of the game so it does which much have took a good few days, weeks, maybe even months to get that right, then still have time to polish and refine the player experience to such a superb level, so superb that most of the times scenery is forgot if its not in the immediate playing field.

Another example is if you look of one edge of narrows, you can actually see a second bridge which i never knew was there until I loaded the map up to look for panoramas, all be it that yet again its a flat bridge image with some 3d trickery, but its still there, the attention to detail is immaculate, even snowbound has a great mountain in the background which as a player, i never even knew it was there.

The final thing i will say is this as beautiful of some of the far of rendering is, like the factory complex outside foundry, and the workings of halo shining in the abys’s of the game, some times its not half a struggle to see it, because of the way that particle effects are employed to make fog appear etc, now i know there are ways round this, but sometimes they take so much effort i almost give up, but thankfully perseverance makes it worth it and i suppose thats what keeps me doing it as well, i love the challenge of getting them to work for me instead of against me.

So thank you Bungie, for putting out an amazing game and making some amazing scenery for us to admire while we pop that bullet through Frankie s head for the umpteenth time.